300 Years Spent With You
by cryptonomicon
Summary: Three hundred years of all the lifetimes that we've spent looking for each other, when really, we've been together all along.
1. Set 1: Provided by Scarlett Foxie

-My GOD I am such a negligent person! I'm so horrendously sorry for all of you who have been waiting for me to update, I will do my best to get back on my writing shoes so you don't have to wait any longer. More notes down on the bottom, etc.

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><p><strong>1: Sunburn<strong>

"Good _God_, Toshiro, I didn't even know they made SPF with a number that high!" Ichigo said, looking with wide eyes at the bottle that Toshiro had set on their kitchen table. The man was currently packing up their cooler, which he insisted on bringing if Ichigo insisted on dragging him along to the beach. Which, much to his imminent chagrin, involved a lot of heat, sand, and just about every other thing he despised on a semi-regular basis. "Why did you need to get one this high? You're not going to be out in the sun anyway; you're just going to be hiding in that damn shanty."

Toshiro's unamused glance from beside the door of the fridge was all he got for an answer for a long moment. And the longer it lasted, the longer he got the idea that this was very much Toshiro's point. "Ichigo," he said flatly, "have you perhaps observed my complexion lately?"

Ichigo stared at the other, decadently confused for a few moments. "Yeah, why?"

"Then you should be able to note quite openly how pale I am."

"Yeah… so?"

"Then how long do you think it would take _any_ skin of mine to burn to a crisp without **extensive** precautionary measures?"

"Touché."

**2: Flip Flops**

"Toshiro, where are Mikan's sandals?" he called from the hall, holding the squirming bundle of their giggling daughter in his arms with some amount of struggle. As she got older and bigger she got harder to handle with just one arm, and he was beginning to wonder just how much time he would have left before he would have to just hold her by the hand rather than carry her. And though that thought scared him a bit, he also couldn't wait to see where she would lead him.

"Top shelf of the hall closet," Toshiro responded coolly as he wandered out into the hallway, his eyes skimming over the last page of his weekly report as he made his way to their front door where the picnic basket they'd arranged lay waiting.

Ichigo walked over, opening the closet and feeling around with one free hand to see if he could reach them. Sure enough, his fingers bumped them after a moment, and he plucked them off the shelf to set down next to his daughter. She slipped into them knowingly, before toddling off to stand next to Toshiro at the door.

"Why were they all the way up there, Toshiro?" he asked as he made his way over, picking up the basket and ruffling her little head a bit as Toshiro folded the papers back and set them on the coffee table.

"Because as cute as they may be," he answered with a smile as he picked up their daughter, "they do make a decent amount of noise when she decides to put them on in the middle of the night and go wandering around the house."

Ichigo's fiery eyebrows rose, his eyes looking down at his daughter as she looked innocently at the two of them. "She does that?" he asked incredulously.

"Oh yes," the white haired Captain replied, amused as he brushed a strand of their daughter's hair out of her face. "You'd be amazed at the antics you miss when you're sleeping like a rock in there."

"Sleepy Daddy!" Mikan chirped in supplement, and that got the both of them smiling.

**3: Opera**

"What on Earth _is this_?"

"It's called a flash-mob, Toshiro. It's where crap-tons of people get together, choreograph a dance to some music, and then go into a public place and storm it for ten minutes for the amusement of the onlookers," Ichigo explained, watching on with a rather large amount of amusement himself as the vast expanse of high schoolers danced about the tram station to a song in Italian that he didn't have any particular recollection of.

"I understand that much," Toshiro admitted, looking around with a scowl curling his upper lip, "but why did they have to pick a song from _TOSCA?_ Surely they could have picked something better than an opera. Or at least a better opera than that one in particular."

Ichigo glanced down at his companion curiously, wondering where the sudden knowledge had come from. "I didn't know you were a fan of musicals, Toshiro."

"True. But you also didn't know I could sing until about a year after we got together, so what does that say about your current knowledge of my most vague interests?" Toshiro quipped back, earning only a laugh in response.

**4: Wine**

"I think I'm going to die," Toshiro wheezed as he pushed the glass back towards Isaiah, who sat laughing at the bar stool next to his own. They'd abandoned Chico for an afternoon in order to hop down to a local town called Bozeman; a hopping young place during all months but summer when the ten thousand or so college students all went home, and a place where the ski bums came to warm up a bit when Big Sky's pretentiousness became just a bit too much to handle. They were tucked away in a small Irish pub on Main Street called _The Bacchus_, where Isaiah had assured him there was some fantastic watermelon wine available.

What he hadn't told Toshiro, on the other hand, was that watermelon wine tasted _nothing_ like watermelon, and everything like _turpentine_. And also _felt _like turpentine, judging by the way it practically seared down his esophagus. He coughed again for good measure, trying to get the noxious gas brought on by the mere sip he'd had out of his lungs.

Isaiah merely clapped a hand on his shoulder as he laughed. "Aw, lighten up, Toshiro," he said a bit too jovially to be taken seriously. "It'll put hair on your chest."

**5: Women**

"I don't fucking get it!" Ichigo roared as they strode down the cement walkway the open courtyard of the marketplace they were visiting in before _The Grace_ arrived. "How the hell can she just slip in and out like that? She must _know_ where I'm going to be just so she can prod in and annoy me!"

"Perhaps you haven't realized this, Ichigo," Toshiro said, looking over at his fuming inamorata with a keen glance, "but women of all sorts have the strange capacity to just _know_ things. Whether or not they use that knowledge purposefully or accidentally is also up to the tendency that women have to be completely unpredictable. Now, before you go and pull any more of your hair out, please calm down. Our train is almost here and I don't want to have to suffer the looks you'll get when you look like you have mange."

"Oh, you're one to talk! Let me know the next time you start bumping into your time-lord stalker on every street corner within a hundred dimensions! Then we'll see how you feel!"

"Probably much the same."

"Shut up."

**6: Song**

It took decades of marriage for Ichigo to realize that Toshiro was a highly musical person. Not just in singing, which he did to occasionally much to Ichigo's delight, but also in battle. He'd been in the courtyard of the practice grounds, practicing with some of his lower ranked officers. The rest of the division was assembled, waiting for a turn to train with their illustrious Captain. Ichigo, who had been some distance away when he'd heard it, had come to investigate.

Because, even above the din of the assembled crowd and the cheers of the onlookers, he'd heard a rhythm. A lilting little thing, fragmented yet no less complete. The clash of a sword, the even stride of a warrior padding in the dirt. The long drag of a sandal across the ground as a stance was adjusted. The swords clashing again, click, click, grind. It was random to anyone without an ear for the poetry of battle, but Ichigo was unsurprised to find that he was not the only non-Squad 10 officer there.

Ikkaku had come also, and was wearing an expression of vague awe on his face, and he smiled at Ichigo as the other man entered. "You have good taste, my friend," Ikkaku said, nodding towards the ring where Toshiro's sharp little cadence went on. "Not often that someone can make a song like _that_."

**7: Over-Eat**

Toshiro wasn't one of the best cooks in the world; this much he knew. But he did take a rather considerable amount of pleasure in cooking whenever he could. And, considering Ichigo wasn't exactly a very capable person, he'd taken it up as his own personal project to improve his culinary skills. But in trade for getting better at it, most of the time it required an almost embarrassing amount of focus for someone proclaimed to be a genius.

So when Ichigo would inevitably interrupt his process, he was always less than marginally pleased. And, that day as seemed to always be the case whenever he invaded the kitchen, he was startled out of his reverie by Ichigo wrapping his lanky arms around the smaller man's torso as way of greeting.

"Love it when you cook," he heard the larger man mumble into his neck with far too much warm-fuzzy-pleasure to be at all fair.

In his irritation, considering it was soufflé he was making and not some kind of simplistic hash recipe that Ichigo would love anyway, he gently-or-not-so-much-so clouted Ichigo in the face perched on his shoulder with the whisk in his hand.

The soufflé had turned out wonderfully, and Ichigo had even managed not to completely gorge himself on Toshiro's cooking as he usually did. But, most rewarding of all, no one even batted an eyelash at the bright red lines that still sat on Ichigo's face the next day, in spite of the unspoken pervasive knowledge that it had probably been Toshiro that put them there.

**8: Storm**

"Could you tell your boyfriend to lay off the weather, Ichigo? It's making fighting kind of a bitch," Renji howled at him over the din of the downpour crushing down from the blackened heavens.

"Just hold out, okay?" Ichigo yelled back, holding an arm up to shield his eyes from the rain. "There's a lot he can do by controlling the water up there. He's practicing some new technique about creating friction by modifying temperature and density."

"What the hell good is that going to do?" Renji barked, before his statement was answered by a clap of white needles that shot across the sky before a rumbling drum of thunder announced the answer.

**9: Void**

"As much as I find it terribly charming that you're a stargazer, Toshiro, I can't help but disapprove of your choice of attire."

The small Captain glanced up at his companion, who had joined him on Chico's lawn as he lay sprawled out over a snowy patch in order to get a proper look at the stars. It was rather incredible, he thought, that out in the wilderness he could see the Milky Way with nothing but his naked eye. Away from light and air pollution, it was a stunning thing to lay eyes on.

Isaiah's face as he looked down at him, however, made him think that there was something derogatory about the situation that he may have been missing.

"Can't say that I agree," he said, shrugging. He was wearing a coat of sorts; and considering the tendency of his spiritual pressure to hedge towards cold, it really wasn't much more than what he would need to keep his gigai from freezing up. But, as he noticed the rather heavy parka that Isaiah was wearing, he began to realize that the tendency of his spiritual pressure was not the problem.

Rather, it was the weather, the dimly lit clouds settling over the valley to the south only barely visible under the starlight and the black void in space they created, that served as the problem.

"For now," he added, noting the farm boy's distinct lack of humor towards his quip, where usually he was in always such a grand favor of a mood. "But if it is that storm to the south of the basin you're worried about, I can see where your logic lies"

"At least you get that much," the young man replied, crossing his arms over his burly chest. "Can you guess what else I'm worried about, or is this going to end up being a formal game of Twenty Questions?"

Toshiro sat up and shook the snow out of his hair, resting his hands in his lap a moment later as Isaiah finally gave in and sat down next to him. "I'm guessing that my lack of weather-appropriate clothing disturbs you. But I can assure you that no harm will come to me because of it. I'm… quite hard, I suppose one could say."

At that, Isaiah did laugh. "That much I'm sure of, Toshiro. But I've seen far too many people come into Montana winters without the proper gear and leave either dead or frostbitten. You're too smart for that, I think. So I just don't want to see you make that mistake."

Toshiro chuckled, nodding lightly. "Understandable," he conceded, but made no obvious move to relocate. "But I can assure you that I of all people know the powers of winter better than most, Isaiah." Toshiro glanced off towards the distant bowl of the southern horizon as it curled into darkness. He could see the front of the storm more clearly now as it crept into the starlight. He let out a low whistling breath, and a fell rumble on the air tore across the basin as the black curling mass retreated back beyond the stretch of his sight and into the south where it had come from.

When he looked back at Isaiah, he came to a heady start that the man had not been paying attention to him, but to the clouds that had unnaturally retreated against the once again silver-freckled skyline.

One glance at Isaiah's curious expression and Toshiro realized his mistake. Isaiah, much like Brego, had an uncanny understanding of things about Toshiro the smaller man had forgotten.

"So, Toshiro," Isaiah said, the smile very prevalent in his voice, "how old _are_ you?"

Toshiro had held onto the vain hope that the young man would ask a vague and idiotic question that Toshiro could weasel himself out of, but at that point, he knew it was well and beyond moot. Isaiah, as per his annoying usual, had gone and done something incredibly intelligent while Toshiro wasn't looking, and had asked him the one thing he couldn't lie about without being discovered.

**10: Black Hole**

Ichigo never much liked to acknowledge the inarguable fact that Toshiro and his hollow half had contact with one another. He realized that no harm would come to Toshiro because of that part of himself, but that didn't mean that he was terribly chuffed about it to begin with. He, of all people, knew how that silver tongue could swallow the light out of the world. He was a black hole, swallowing everything that he could get his white hands on and absorbing it with little remorse.

**11: Nova**

But as time wore on, Ichigo began to realize that he had little to worry about. Because as much as his hollow was a black hole, Toshiro was a star gone supernova; explosive and unyielding as it drew lines of light and fire and ice across his darkened world. Destructive, perhaps, or perhaps just a tool of reformation.

**12: Doll**

"Ichigo, you are a horrible influence on my son," Renji griped at him one day after clocking him on the arm. "All of you are, especially Mikan."

"The hell did I do?" Ichigo asked, rubbing at his arm and glaring at the other petulantly. "And what the hell are you blaming on my daughter, Renji? She hasn't done anything."

"Oh yes she has," Renji rebuked. "Now because of that silly _shark_ doll she loves so much, Reno wants one too. And since we made it especially for her, there's no possible way for me to make one for him exactly like it."

Ichigo burst out into laughter. "Well, you never know Renji. You could always ask Byakuya where he got his material. It's always a start. And hey, who knows, maybe he'd be happy to chip in on an effort for his nephew, eh?" At that, both of them laughed, knowing that in spite of the blood relation between Renji's son and the Head of the Kuchiki house, there was far more affection in the stoic man's heart for his and Toshiro's little girl.

But, as Renji set of with a determined expression on his face, Ichigo got the feeling that he'd be willing to give it one hell of a go anyway.

**13: Telle-Tubbies**

Toshiro looked skeptically at the DVD in Ichigo's hand, his eyebrow kicking up as a scowl mottled his usually becoming features. Mikan wriggled in his arms, her binky unable to hide the smile she had on her face. Thankfully, it wasn't directed at her father's selection in movies, and rather towards just about everything else.

"Ichigo, we are not having our daughter grow up on _Telle-Tubbies_. Find her something better than that, for heaven's sake," he said, hiking her further up on his hip as Ichigo looked mildly crestfallen. He didn't hold a lot of sympathy for the man at the moment; it was the third disturbing children's show he'd come back with. Each, sadly, worse than the last.

"She has to have something fitting her age, Toshiro. She just watch older kid cartoons," he said, before realizing that as a child, he'd done no such thing. Age-specified cartoons had come out a bit too late for him; so he'd grown up with the good old fashioned ones regardless of his age. He set his third failed attempt back on the shelf, before scanning for a more suitable title.

One caught his eye that he couldn't resist, and so he snatched it, knowing that this one at least wouldn't get shot down at first glance when Toshiro caught wind of it. It made it so far actually that Toshiro took it into his own busy hands to examine it. Mikan's interest, though fleeting, settled on it with approval, her little wiggling hands tracing the faces on the cover of the box set.

"I think this might be a better choice, all things considered," Toshiro said, a satisfied gleam in his eyes. Ichigo smiled, knowing that the old Hanna-Barbera classics like _Jonny Quest_ really couldn't go wrong.

**14: Southern Fried Chicken**

"So it was Xavier that sent you down here? Seems like an odd place to be snoopin' around fellas, I must say," the strange man sitting across from them admitted as he deftly flicked an entire deck of cards from one set of nimble fingers to the other. With apparently no fear of spilling any of them on to the picnic table laden with all manner of southern fixings, including a rather savory looking bucket full of fried chicken.

"We're not snooping," Toshiro said, his wrist flicking out to snatch one of the cards out of the deck flittering between the mutant's hands. "We're gathering general information," he said, holding the card in front of the man tantalizingly before setting it face down on the table.

The Queen of Hearts stared up at the table, and the Cajun man seemed wildly taken aback. "Well, gentlemen," he said with a long drawl, "when you put it like _that_, I can't help but be interested. What can good old Gambit do for you?"

**15: Darker than Black**

It was like looking into the depths of hell, Ichigo decided as the sky seemed to descend around them in a curtain of enraged black. The line of Captains alongside him did little to comfort him as they faced down the one enemy they had always expected to be rid of.

But, sadly unsurprisingly, Aizen had escaped again to meet a world preparing for his eventual treachery. But as Ichigo caught the gaze of that man, he realized that the dark pupils held something that none of them could contend with, and that was the _silence_ of a genius sentenced to isolation.

Aizen said nothing, and in that moment, the years of peace broke apart into silent war.

**16: Lost and Found**

"Who knew that the key to Byakuya's heart was a couple of kids running around the house," Toshiro mused from the balcony of the Kuchiki Mansion as the Squad 6 Captain and the two children he'd agreed to babysit engaged in a very serious game of Hide & Seek.

"I think you figured it out first, Toshiro," Ichigo conceded with a smile. "And, admittedly, I'm very glad that you did."

**17: Contact Rubber Cement**

"Where the hell did you find contact rubber cement in the Soul Society?"

"Toshiro, you do have to remember sometimes that I have family back on Earth that have very easy access to things as useful as contact rubber cement… That, and along with duct tape, it's one of the things that I keep in the house at all times."

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><p>-So, yes. I do live, it's been a long time, I know, and I will do my best to get back on track this fall. Things got really stressful at the end of my college semester in the spring, which was about when I dropped off the face of the earth. I was concerned with not failing, finding a job, etc. Everything worked out, all is well, and now I'm back to schoolwork/writing, and will have more updates very soon. Not sure when Burn to Black's next chapter will be up, but I will do my best to get it up and running as soon as possible. Please don't forget, lovely readers, that I am still taking prompts; feel free to donate in reviews or messages. They will be gotten to, I promise.

8-90s love,

crypto


	2. Set 2:Provided by Hysteria of the Fallen

-I realize that my AN from last chapter failed to portray something important that one of the reviewers reminded me of, so I'd like to say it now rather than continue to screw myself over. I realize that all of you don't have lives that revolve around fanfiction; I am glad. I know that you realize that I have a life outside of fanfiction. I am glad for that too. But I am also glad that, all our lives aside, you take time out of your busy lives to come and read what I write. I'm glad that even after so long you'll even take the time to read anything I've written. So thank you, all readers anonymous or named, for coming and taking a few minutes to read what I write. You should know that, regardless of how much I like writing, I write this for an audience. That means you. So, that being said, here's to you, readers.

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><p><strong>1: Theft<strong>

"Ichigo..."

"Yes, Toshiro?"

"Did that seagull just do what I think it did?"

"If you mean walk into the grocery store, steal a bag of chips, and then leave, then yes."

"I don't know whether to be impressed or dismayed."

"Why would you be dismayed?"

"Because it really is a poor reflection on how clever people are when they can't even keep seagulls from stealing."

**2: Wet Sand**

"That," Ichigo proclaimed with a bit of awe in his voice, "is quite the sandcastle, Toshiro."

Which was quite a massive understatement all things considered. The thing had spires, turrets, parapets, a foyer, a moat, and even a mock drawbridge. It could fit at least three people on the inside, and not just kids; grown people.

Meaning they could easily fit four or five Toshiro-sized people inside, but on that he chose not to comment.

"How did you do it?" he asked as he peered inside to find Toshiro lounging on a teal and white striped beach towel with a thick book in his hands. It made sense that he would make a place to hide in the shade now that the beach house was gone, but an immaculate sandcastle seemed a bit much.

"I know how to work with anything water-related," the smaller man replied rather unhelpfully. "Including wet sand. And, by proxy, animals that live in the water."

Ichigo didn't realize until he actually looked that the moat, which was indeed filled with water, that surrounded the castle actually had a little octopus in it, who flashed an array of bright colors as soon as Ichigo laid eyes on him.

Of all things, the octopus turned the same color orange as his hair, and he couldn't help the stupid laugh that came bubbling past his lips.

**3: Just A Boy With A Coin**

It took a long time to get any real word out of Xavier what the X-Men's archenemy was like. They'd asked others frequently, and had gotten varying, but colorfully uniform answers. He was evil, a bastard, out of his mind, but sadly had some very strong points and some even stronger allies going along with his cause. Ichigo was more than willing to accept that sentiment for what it was; seeing as it sounded a lot like Aizen and that whole mess.

But Toshiro was not so convinced, and whenever Ichigo shared explanations on Aizen's behavior to the other mutants, passed without making a single comment to the conversation. Ichigo knew that of anyone Toshiro would probably have some of the most terrible stories to tell, but he didn't utter a word, and refused to until he finally got out of Xavier what he wanted.

What they did get out of Xavier was a short, but very sad story.

"When I met Erik Lenscherr, he was just a sad little boy with a coin who missed his mother." He'd paused, as if considering what he could even say next on the man who had apparently single handedly ruined his life. "When I met Magneto, he was a man enraged by life's injustices, and took it out on those he believed responsible, regardless of who got wounded or damaged in the process."

To which Toshiro replied, "When I met Sosuke Aizen he was my only friend's hero, and someone who never had a doubt regarding the talents and uses of others. When I met Aizen, he was a man lost in his own convictions and schemes, completely convinced of the fact that he was God, and by association, infallible."

Even Xavier admitted that the stories carried a strange symmetry, but Toshiro proceeded to say no more about the matter. Ichigo wished he would have, so he could have known what dark thoughts were going through the other man's head.

**4: Junk**

"Daddy, what's junk?"

Sometimes, Ichigo rued the fact that Toshiro had taught their daughter how to speak so eloquently at so young an age. Mostly because it prevented her from knowing what some common vernacular was.

"What do you mean, honey?" he asked, hiking her up over his shoulders as they walked home one night.

"Ms. Rangiku was saying to Mommy that she was having lady-problems with all of her junk because she couldn't find clothes that fit right. What's junk?"

Ichigo would definitely have to have words with Matsumoto later about what was said around his daughter.

**5: Only Sleeping**

Mikan never really knew how her parents managed. They were both positively genius men in their own rights, but sometimes there were things that children had to be explained that simply could not be in simplistic childish terms. Death, of course, being the most prominent concept that made parents lose sleep at night wondering how to explain it to their children.

She remembered when one of the lower squad officers in her Father's division had been grievously wounded and carted off to Squad 4 for serious medical attention. Mikan, at the time, young and impressionable, had thought that he was only sleeping as the Squad 4 emergency relief team carted him away.

Her parents had looked at each other, she remembered. She always remembered when they did that when she was young because she felt like she was being left out of a conversation; like they, somehow without words, were saying things to each other that she couldn't hear and couldn't understand. It frustrated her a lot, but she never complained, knowing that one day she would understand.

And one day she did, though she still sometimes couldn't catch what was going on between the two of them when their eyes were talking and their mouths weren't. But she was always brought back to that thought, knowing that, somehow, that ultrasensory perception in her was only sleeping; just waiting to be woken up by the right company.

**6: Empire State Of Mind**

"So this is the famed New York," Toshiro commented. His eyes were cast skywards mostly, examining with a great amount of interest the vaulting skyscrapers rather than what may have actually been in them. Or, perhaps, the millions of people bustling around them doing God knew what.

"You sound nonplussed," Ichigo said, trying to shoulder his way through the crowd as Toshiro's smaller frame slipped in and out of the throng through gaps that Ichigo could only look at. "I thought you'd be impressed."

"I'm nonplussed with the hype," Toshiro admitted, before glancing back at Ichigo rather approvingly. "But I approve of much of the architectural prowess, especially that building there."

He had jerked his thumb toward one of the wider towers set out in front of them, and Ichigo almost groaned. Knowing Toshior, a visit to Stark Tower was imminent, but equally imminent was something completely insane and unlikely happening to them while there.

**7: Farce**

"Why, Ichigo?" Toshiro whispered, his little hands curling alongside the upper reaches of Ichigo's brow as the Captain beneath him slowly began to struggle with consciousness. "Why didn't you tell me _everything_?"

"I could have lied and not told you anything, you know," he said through a sickening cough.

Toshiro only smiled sadly. "No, Ichigo, I don't think you could have."

Sadly, Ichigo knew Toshiro was right.

**8: Midnight**

"Up burning the midnight oil? Or are you a scholar as much as you are a King?"

The snow headed heir looked up from the tome he was poring over, even as he walked like a shade down the long hallway, scarcely making a sound as he moved. Ichigo was surprised, upon entering the hallway, to find that anyone was even there. He'd assumed he was alone, which was why he thought he'd be able to lose himself in his thoughts for a moment.

Because, as strange as it was, he felt that even his thoughts were not protected from the people of his kingdom. Especially not his mages, who, in spite of being very talented and utmost trustworthy to act in the greatest demand of the kingdom, were not above using a stray thought against him should it come to it.

"What purpose is there for midnight oil if not to be burned at the appropriate time?" the other reigning power answered, closing his book without any seeming heed to the page he'd been examining. "Regardless, I find it calming to walk and engage the mind before retiring, so I reduce the amount of time spent doing both by doing them at once."

"Smart." Ichigo walked up to the slighter man, noticing that the spine of the book was pressed with silver runes that he did not recognize. And that was saying quite a bit, as he recognized the runes of the mages in his own country, and even recognized and could read the language of the north. He looked with curious eyes to his guest.

"Are you a mage as well?" It would be curious to have a king be both a magical power and a ruling figure. He himself barely had enough time for his diplomatic studies, let alone the studious accounts that were required of mages. "I do not recognize that language which you are reading."

The pale man's face fell into a light smile, like the first fleeting flakes during the harvest season that served as a grim foreboding marker of what was to come in winter. "For you it may be unusual, but magic is strong within the north. One who does not know how to wield it properly is doomed to be destroyed by it eventually. All young children are taught this."

"As are ours," he replied chuckling. "Though magic is for those of severe and talented disposition. Either the magics in your country are far more placid than ours, or yours are a people of equally genius make."

The small king laughed. "You make firm assessments. Perhaps one day you will have to see it for yourself, for I find that I do not quite know how to explain it to you." A sharp gleam passed over his eyes. "But those who are considered talented amongst my court mages are so to a remarkable degree, that I will not deny."

One of Ichigo's eyebrows rose, a rueful smile on his face. "Oh? And are _you_ of "talent" enough for your contry?"

The smile edged a bit more towards a leer, one that reflected the deep set green eyes perfectly.

'_Your thoughts may be safe from your mages, my Lord, whether you think it or not. They are not, however, safe from me_.'

Ichigo gave a great start, staring down at the young man in astonishment, but the young man seemed to only revel in it. His lips had not budged, but his voice had cut clear through to Ichigo's mind by ways he could not describe. But instead of feeling dismayed, he only smiled, leaning down with a feral grin of his own.

"Then know clearly, King of the North, that regardless of your mischief, I trust you not to disuse my trust." He showed his teeth. "If you prove me wrong, equal mischief will be done unto you, that much I can promise."

"I would not stand here still if I were not absolutely sure of that," the smaller man remarked with equal humor. "So consider your challenge accepted."

**9: We Believe**

"The Soul Society is not heaven, Ichigo. Hueco Mundo is not hell. The Train Station is not Limbo, and no dream of Dante could ever perceive the true face of any of those places. They are forever beyond us, but that is no cause for despair. That is cause for progress, and for evolution of the soul as a complex being. Because our only hope, from those places, is to grow until we can see the faces of utopia and true despair that will allow us to define without question the white and black sides of the world that have faded to gray along with the sense of self that each of us had at the beginning of it all."

**10: Voodoo Child**

"Pardon me, _monsieur_. I wonder if you're the man known as Gambit?"

"Why, yes, _mon cheri_, I am. What can I do for a lovely voodoo child like you?"

"You could tell me a few things about a couple of men that you met some years ago, if you can recall."

"I meet many men whom I do not recall, darling, but something tells me I do remember who you want to know about."

"Oh?"

"Of course, mon cheri. You have your mother's beautiful eyes, and your father's hair. Now, what can good old Gambit tell you?"

**11: The Sea & The Rhythm**

Toshiro was back out on the docks after spending two days in the port city, trying to get a bearing on where his instincts were telling him to go. He was hoping he'd get a feeling for where he needed to go to get to Ichigo, but so far he'd been left miring in the fog and walking the cobblestone alleyways with no success to be noted.

He watched for hours, that day he chose to sit and wait. The deep blue tide crawling up to shore in a gray-tipped wash, and flowing back out in a breathy exhale of a sodden, unseen underworld. The silver moon sat as a phantom on the pale blue horizon, curled against the arc of the earth far out beyond the reach of the hand of the fog and the cloud skirting the edges of the eastern sky.

_There_, he thought at last, when the red hues of a safe evening sea bled into the deep encompassing purple of night where the great white gold coin of the moon hung in orchestrated resplendence next to an ensemble of platinum dusting. _Up there beyond all this is where you are_.

But as he felt the wood beneath his feet, and heard the sea whispering in his ears, he understood a slow undulated beat that was the heart of the world. He frowned to himself, closing his eyes to shut off what he didn't need; the temporary beauty of what eyes could perceive. The rhythm remained, and he understood.

_You're not out there amongst the stars. You're here with me even now, constant as the presence of the earth beneath the sea._

* * *

><p>-Here we are! Not quite up to my old habits of getting two sets up in a day, but this set at least didn't take me months to complete. Thanks to Hysteria of the Fallen for donating these; I hope that they were to your liking. The opportunity for prompt donations is still open, so feel free to throw a few at me if you have any ideas. Until next time, hope your seas fare well.<p>

8-90s love,

crypto


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